T: Today is the 14^th of September 2001, and this is an interview with Frederick Branham here in Twin Lakes Township, Carlton County, Minnesota. First, Mr. Branham, let me thank you for taking time out of your day to sit for the interview; I appreciate it very much. As I mentioned before [we started taping], we’ll start with some general questions. Let me begin by asking when and where you were born.

F: I was born in Wrenshall, Minnesota, on February 14, 1926.

T: Now Wrenshall is pretty close to Cloquet, and south of Duluth, right?

F: Yes.

T: You attended school for a number of years and then went to work in the area, didn’t you?

F: Yes. I went to work at age sixteen at Potlatch. That was Northwest Paper Company at that time.

T: How did you get to work every day?

F: When I first started out I rode my bicycle. After I got more affluent I bought a car, a 1936 Chevrolet, which I put to good use. I drove that to work. When gasoline got real scarce, which it did, we had a carpool. My Dad and several of the fellas he worked with and myself took turns driving the group to work. We were all on the same shift so it worked out quite well.

T: What year did you start working at Potlatch?

F: 1942.

T: So that was after the U.S. had entered the war. Speaking of that, do you remember what you were doing when you heard the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor?

F: Yes. I was at home with my folks. It was on a Sunday. That’s about all I can remember of it. I didn’t really know where Pearl Harbor was . I don’t think I was alone in that; I think there were quite a few people that didn’t know where Pearl Harbor was. After it sunk in I guess I felt like every other American, that probably something had to be done about it. I guess we did.

T: Were you listening to the radio with your folks when you heard the news?

F: Yes.

T: Was your folks’ reaction different than yours?

F: I don’t believe so. I don’t think so.

T: You wouldn’t call the reaction panic stricken or…?

F: No, I wouldn’t. I think probably they were like all parents at that point—they wondered if I would have to go into the service, because I don't think anybody had any illusions that it was going to be a short war. They knew it would be a war, and chances were very good that I would go in. I suppose they worried about that. Although they didn’t say anything about it.

T: Did you have older brothers?

F: No.

T: So you would have been the first child to go.

F: Yes. I was their only son.

T: Being born in 1926, when the war began you were clearly not of draft age anyway.

F: Right. That’s correct.

T: Now, joining the military. You joined the Army, or were you drafted?

F: I was drafted, twice.

T: Drafted twice? Can you explain that?

F: Sure. The first time—my birthday is in February—I was called up in March. I went down for my physical at Fort Snelling [in Minneapolis] and thought I had gotten in all right. I really wanted to go, because there weren’t many people around my age any more. They’d all left. It turned out I had a hernia, which I knew I had, but I wasn’t going to divulge that to them. So they sent me on home. I went and talked to the gentleman on the draft board and asked what classification I’d be. He said it would be limited service. I didn’t like the sound of that at all, so I asked him what would happen if I had this hernia fixed. He said, "Well, we’d probably draft you again, if you wanted. You could volunteer for that. " I said, "Okay." I went in April, I can’t remember the exact date, and had Dr. Roy Rader fix my hernia for me. It wasn’t like it is now where they kick you out the same day, but I was in the hospital nine days at that time. Anyway, I came out of that just fine and went back to work. After a short period I went down and talked to the same gentleman at the draft board. I can’t remember his name but I can picture him. I said "I’m all fixed up. What can you do?" He said, "I’ll sent you with the next bunch." So I was sent down to Fort Snelling in September [1944] and on September 11^th I was sworn in.

T: Did you consider volunteering for the Navy or something like that?

F: Unable to do so at that point. They weren’t volunteering anybody. I mean you could volunteer to be drafted, but you couldn’t volunteer for the Marines, or anything. They drafted a group of people, and if the Navy needed so many, then they took a look at what the qualifications were and took them. Some of the fellas that went down with me for the draft the second time, they went in the Navy. But I went in the Army.

T: How did your folks respond to you finally getting into the military?

F: I imagine they worried. They didn’t say too much. They wrote to me and I wrote to them as often as I could. But I don’t think they really worried, outside of worrying that I would be killed, I don’t suppose they had too much worry. My mother went to work right away, which was good. I think my mother was a very nervous person. This probably gave her something to interest her.

T: She hadn’t worked before this?

F: No. She never had.

T: You were inducted at Fort Snelling. Where did you do your basic training?

F: Camp Robinson, Arkansas. Camp Joseph T. Robinson, Arkansas.

T: Fort Robinson, Arkansas. Now that’s the South.

F: Yes.

T: Was that the first time you had been to the South?

F: Yes, indeed. Didn’t like their food to start with. (laughs)

T: I was going to ask you what you thought of the experience. We can start with the food.

F: It was okay. It was terribly hot when I got down there in September. Of course, infantry training is an awful lot of physical work. That’s a positive way to put it. In the morning your fatigues would be fairly dry and clean. You had probably washed them the night before. And when you came in you looked like you’d lived in a hole for a week. Your feet ached and your back ached. You didn’t get along too well with some of the sergeants and you spent some time in the kitchen because of that. I seemed to get into that kind of trouble once in a while.

T: With the drill sergeants?

F: Yes. But they were looking for people for K.P., so I never felt too bad about it.

T: At this time, was the military, was the Army, still segregated?

F: I don’t know exactly what you mean about segregated. Blacks and whites? I believe it was. We did have, when I took basic training, quite a group of Japanese down the street from us that were training for the U.S. Army. But they didn’t associate with us at all that I ever recall. But we knew they were there. They marched by and we would see them. We could tell them from the Germans, because they had quite a few prisoners of war there.

T: At your compound there?

F: Yes. They had work details. I never did find out where they worked but they always used to make a point of about five o’clock in the afternoon or five-thirty, when we would be getting ready for chow, they’d come marching down the street on that blacktop singing at the top of their lungs, saying, "Look what we can do, fellas." Of course, we’d all grit our teeth. Let them go on. They did that frequently.

T: The Germans?

F: Yes. Very proud people.

T: Do you recall any blacks at Camp Robinson?

F: No. The only one I can recall at all was [the singer] Lena Horne. She came and entertained us. That’s the only one I saw there in the whole camp. There may have been some, because it was quite a large training camp at that time.

T: That was September that you actually got there in 1944?

F: Yes. Probably three or four days out of St. Paul.

T: By train, right?

F: Yes. A sleeping car actually. We had it made.

T: Do you have a positive memory of basic training camp, one incident that you can recall?

F: Very vivid ones. Sometimes in the training schedule you had a free period, you thought. I think during my training down there I had enough training in bayonet to be an instructor. You see, it was very physical. You had to be like a ballet dancer with that stupid thing. That seemed to be my free periods. I felt picked upon but that didn’t change anything at all.

T: So you spent free time doing bayonet practice?

F: About forty hours I estimate.

T: I guess you were quite proficient in that after forty hours.

F: Yes. And you can’t guess what happened when I got over in France—I threw the bayonet away.

T: No kidding?

F: You bet I did. Along with many other infantrymen. Figured if we got close enough we’re going to shoot them. If we’re out of ammunition we’ll surrender.

T: Really?

F: Sure. I thought about this at great length since coming home. I maintain that you can kill quite easily with a bullet, but to stab somebody and feel the flesh and everything else that you’re destroying, I don’t think you can do that.

T: Interesting. Your comment was that you weren’t alone in that sentiment.

F: Oh, no. There were very few bayonets visible. We had trench knives, but that was more utility—we opened our K rations boxes and stuff with those. Sometimes cans.

T: That’s interesting.

Was this the first time you’d been away from home for an extended period of time?

F: Yes.

T: How did that impact you?

F: Well, it was kind of an adventure to start with. I didn’t mind. I was lonesome for my future wife. We’d gone together before I went in the service.

T: So you knew each other before you went in?

F: Oh, yes, we did. We were engaged when I left. I was only eighteen years old but we were engaged anyway. Yes, it was the first time away from home. We couldn’t really plan on a furlough, none of us that were taking basic training could. They were short of infantry at that time and we all knew it. Right after the Battle of the Bulge [in December 1944]. Our basic training was cut short. We were supposed to have seventeen weeks, but we got fourteen weeks and shipped home on a twelve day delay route. I saw my family just for a few days because I had to be at Fort Meade, Maryland. From that point on they ere just holding us until there was transportation, I imagine, to get us over there. I spent my nineteenth birthday in Briars Flats. That was a replacement depot. There we were issued all brand-new rifles and stuff which we had to clean. They were packed in cosmoline.

T: Did you get all the stuff off of there?

F: Oh, man, what a job! Soak them in fuel oil. Terribly difficult.

T: So your basic training was cut short a few weeks due to the need for manpower after the Battle of the Bulge?

F: Yes. Three weeks. The need for replacements.

T: When did you get to Fort Meade, Maryland, do you remember?

F: Not exactly, no.

T: When did you ship out?

F: I think we shipped on the 1^st of February [1945].

T: And you went to France directly?

F: No, we went to England. Actually Scotland. We landed at a little port called Bork. They had to transfer us. I went on the Queen Elizabeth, which had twenty odd thousand of us on it. She couldn’t get into a harbor at that point, and they had to ferry us in.

T: Because of the size of the ship?

F: That’s right. Then they loaded us in trains and took us across Scotland and down the east coast of England, all the way down to Southampton [port city on England’s south coast]. There was no stopping on that. We got to South Hampton, we were fed, and were loaded aboard a ship called the Emperor Rapier, which was a liberty ship, very new. This went across to Le Havre [port city on the Atlantic coast of France]. I think we were all very frightened at that point, not because the Germans were standing on the beach, but they dropped the anchor chain. I happened to be up in the forward hold, sleeping up there. It sure woke us up in a hurry. It sounded like a machine gun, like we were being strafed.

T: The anchor chain going down?

F: Yes. Terrible noise.

T: How old were these guys in your company?

F: Eighteen, nineteen.

T: We’re talking fresh recruits who have been trained.

F: Right.

T: How would you characterize the mood among guys when you dropped anchor there at Le Havre?

F: I don’t know how I would characterize that. I suppose some were terribly frightened. Some were curious like myself; I’ve always had a curiosity for everything. It was interesting to see France right away. We didn’t get a chance to spend much time in England, but I loved what I did see. I’ve liked to travel ever since. That’s one of the positive things, I guess. We were all eighteen, nineteen years old, and at that age you don’t have too many cares in the world. You don’t really figure, well I could die two weeks from now or anything. You don’t think about those things then. We had a while to go, we knew that, before we’d get up to the line. Some of us, it happened quite fast, we’d get up there. Some didn’t. Most of the guys that went from Camp Robinson in my company, most of us, went to the European Theater. In fact there was one boy, Wayne Berlard, he was in my hut when we took basic. I found out here just a few years ago he was in my same company, and I didn’t know it. We were separated by platoon here and platoon there. You’ve got three platoons, heavy weapons platoons besides.

T: So it was easy to have someone in your company and not necessarily know they were there?

F: Yes. To continue, we stayed up above Le Havre on a bluff in a tent city. We stayed up there probably overnight, I guess it was. We were fed and the next day we marched back into Le Havre and we boarded a French train. There were compartments, nine of us to a compartment. This is kind of a little slur against the French, but it’s true. They tried to rip us off pretty good there. I imagine they were desperate for money and things, too. I learned later on to understand maybe that was one of the reasons, economics. As the train started to move, of course the M.P.s kept all civilians away from the depot and the tracks and everything, the train started to move very, very slowly. Here come the French people, mostly the men, holding up bottles, vino, cognac, some fellas got water. Some bought cognac, it was supposed to be cognac, and it turned out to be wine. So they took us to the cleaners. Not me, because I didn’t have any use for either one of them at that point. But that’s one of my first memories of France, and I wasn’t too impressed with those folks.

Then they took us across France by train. It was kind of nice, because they would stop the train completely. They must have had a field kitchen someplace, because they would stop the train right there and we all got out and had our meal and got back on and continued again. The next thing I remember about that, I’m sure there’s much more, but what stuck in my mind, was the fact that we were told that we had to change our clothes. Strip all of our clothes off and put on clean ones. Keep extra stockings. Make a choice whether we wanted a raincoat or an overcoat. Keep your gloves. You could only have one pair of boots, so take your best pair. We had two that we went with, but you had to take your best pair. We really stripped down to practically nothing as far as the stuff you carried over. We didn’t even have rifles at that point. They were issued to us later directly. It was interesting.

T: What was the purpose of that?

F: It would probably come to you a little while later. We could be up on the line and we could go for weeks without a shower or changing clothes. Our stockings, you had the same two pair or three, whatever you salvaged when you left. The same underwear. Everything. We used to dry the stockings by putting them next to our skin underneath our shirts. I imagine it must have smelled pretty bad after a while, but at least they were dry. That’s pretty much it. They had us strip down real naked. I mean there were people bartering for our soap and extra stuff that we had. The French were out there and wanted that.

T: What month is this?

F: This is February 1945.

T: Did this change the mood, your kind of sense of what was happening, or about to happen?

F: Yes. When they start getting you ready to go up to the line you know what’s going to happen. You don’t have a rifle but you’re quite sure you’re going to get one. On my birthday, February 14^th of that year, two fellas and I went into the town of Briars. We knew we were going up to the line. It didn’t make any difference as to what punishment you were going to get. When we got back, the C.O. of that billet said, "I hope you fellas had a good time." We said, "Yes, we did." He said "Bye. You’re going up to the line tomorrow, the first truck out. We said, "We knew that." He said, "You knew it, did you?" We said, "Yes, we did." "Well, its okay," he said, "no problem." Nothing on our records at all.

T: You weren’t supposed to have been in that town.

F: No. We weren’t supposed to leave there.

T: So the next morning your company was loaded on some trucks?

F: Yes. I, among the other two fellas. I don’t know how many more ere goofing off. We were sent up there by truck .

T: Where did you arrive then?

F: We arrived at Odding, a little town about three miles from Forbach, France, which is close to the German border. We stayed there for just a day or two. A real strange thing happened there—the first time I had to go down the line to get prisoners. Another fella and I did it. Some Germans had surrendered, so we had to walk down there. As I left Odding through a pretty large field into a wooded area where the road went, I saw a fella coming along, a little short guy. There was a tall guy, and the little guy fella skipping along. I told my partner, "Boy, that walk sure looks familiar to me." He said, "Do you think you know him?" I said, "I’m almost positive." I got up there and sure enough, it was the boy that lived next door to my folks when I was a child. "Freddie Branham, what are you doing here?" I said, "Well, I heard there was a war. I wanted to come and see what it’s like." "You’re a darned fool," he said.

T: This guy was in the Army too?

F: Yes. A medic, battalion aide. He said, "Have you been assigned to a company yet?" I said, "Yes. We just came up and I’m going to Charlie Company, C Company." "Oh, God!" he said. That really made me feel great. "You’re going in Captain Greenwald’s company." I said, "I don’t know." "Yes," he said, "that’s C Company." I said, "What’s the matter with it?" "Oh," he said, "You’ll find out. He takes the tough ones." So I went down and we picked up these two prisoners and brought them back. That was my first exposure to the line. Everything was pretty quiet then. In the next day or two we moved down into the line. There was noise practically all the time. Not heavy artillery or anything, but a lot of small arms fire. You learned to tell the difference between the German fire and the American fire.

T: Just by the sounds that they make?

F: Yes. After you get acquainted with that, you could soon tell how close an artillery shell was going to land. The only thing that fooled us was mortars from the Germans. They made no noise until they hit the ground. Otherwise you had time to duck the shells. Crawl back into your hole a little deeper. They used rockets on us there as well. We called them "screaming meemies." You could hear them set off for probably a mile. They didn’t make any noise before they hit, but you always knew when they launched because they had a distinct sound. "Whoop, whoop." We’d wait for a few seconds and they’d be there.

T: Frederick, what was your job specifically?

F: Starting out I carried rifle grenades. I was a grenadier, the eleventh man on the squad, which meant I carried six rifle grenades in a bag beside my rifle and all the ammunition for that. A full cartridge belt, two to four bandoliers of ammunition besides, and a gas mask, which we threw away. We used that to carry our cigarettes.

T: They issued you a gas mask?

F: Yes, but we all threw them away. That was quite a load to be carrying.

T: It must have weighed quite a bit.

F: Oh, yes. Ammunition was heavy. Besides grenades hanging on you like a Christmas tree. An awful lot of grenades were used, particularly in night fighting, because there is no muzzle flash or anything. The grenade just lands and explodes. We were pretty calm there for a while. The Germans shelled occasionally.

T: Were you dug out in foxholes or in tents?

F: Not in Forbach. We were in houses. Sometimes in the basement. I showed one house to Dorothy when we went over in 1982. The railroad bridge was probably eight to ten feet high, and an underpass that went underneath it. We occupied a building on the right hand side going through the underpass. From our second story we could look over and see the German lines. They didn’t know we were there. That was amazing to me that they didn’t know we were there, but they didn’t.

We had two counterattacks by the Germans off to our right, up at B Company. I don’t know if they were drunk or what was going on, but they were all ready for action. The Germans came rushing out of the woods shouting and hollering and firing and everything else. They ran almost right up to the railroad tracks before B Company cut them down just like bowling pins. Then they retreated. We were told immediately, somebody came from our command post down there, "Don’t fire. They don’t know we’re here. Don’t fire." So we didn’t. And don’t you suppose, about a half an hour later the Germans came out and tried it again with the same results.

At the end we had some Free French, I don’t know if it was a whole platoon of them or what, that were attached to our company or B Company, I’m not sure which. They tried to counterattack, too, but they lost heart in a hurry. After a while everybody went out and picked up their wounded. Our medics were out there and the German medics, too.

T: Within sight of each other?

F: Yes.

T: Was there firing at the medics?

F: No. You have to understand that infantry respects infantry. We respected the German soldier. We weren’t arguing him, only his government. That wasn’t his fault either in most cases. It’s a very brutal business being in the infantry. It’s very brutal. He deserved the respect you could give him. So that’s the way most of us felt. I only saw one prisoner abused and nobody liked that. That should never have happened, but it did.

T: That puts the European war on a different level than the Pacific.

F: Oh, much different. Much, much different. After being in that one spot for probably three or four days, we could only go out at night to go eat. This underpass, apparently they set up a machine gun directly opposite it, so they could fire right down the street that ran along to our left. The last one across when we would go to get chow would stomp his feet just like he was running and we’d stand and watch the tracers come through about four feet high. Same thing going back. Every squad that went to eat.

T: Had to cross this street?

F: Yes. They wouldn’t know we were crossing. We would tippy-toe across and the last one would stomp his feet and run.

T: Was it more of a game as you described it?

F: At that point, yes, it was. (laughs) After a while, they must have waited until they got reinforcements or regrouped or whatever, I don’t know. Our squad was pretty much set where we were. In fact, we had the whole platoon in that building. We were given the word that we would kickoff at 7:30 in the morning. I felt very good about it because I was in the squad, the one squad that was held in reserve. We went across that road. We knocked the machine gun out with artillery right away and I watched the house completely disintegrate.

T: The house where the machine gun had been?

F: No. Not the one set up at the crossroad but the one beyond that, a yellow one. I was up with the artillery observer and he called back his coordinates. He had tile poked up just out of the roof so we could see out. It was the attic, really, and he called some coordinates and, boy, a German staff car came up to this yellow house. A woman was shaking a rug or blanket out of an old balcony on the second floor. Boy, when the shells hit that house, it was nothing. It was just flattened. It was all gone. I often wondered what happened to that woman. She had to have been killed immediately.

T: As well as the occupants of the house.

F: Oh, yes. Anyway, we went across the road and through a sawmill, which was still there in 1982, and proceeded to the depot. I didn’t go any further than the sawmill, because that’s where our squad was held. Then one squad started across the tracks. The other one was holed up in the depot. The one that was crossing the tracks got pinned down immediately. I mean they were throwing everything at us. We were attacking and they knew it. It must have been 7:30 or quarter to eight. We stayed in the sawmill. The squad that was in the depot couldn’t get out; they were pinned down. About 4:00 in the afternoon or a little after that we were told we were going to be the ones crossing. We were going to go through the underpass. We had tank lines set there, about so big, and they had to be pulled off. Three tanks went through first. They only went up about a block, and one of them drew fire, and they retreated in a hurry for some reason or other.

T: The tanks did?

F: Yes. All three of them. I had never heard their captain swear, but I did that time. I was standing close to him and he was using his radio trying to get them back. He didn’t call too pleasant names at them. Anyway, one came back and we followed him through and we didn’t get quite to the first house and the artillery shells from the Germans hit one of the tracks. Of course, it was dead.

T: The tank was hit?

F: Yes. Can’t move with one track. So they popped out of there and took off and left us in the open, which was the prudent thing to do. We took seven houses before dark in house to house fighting. Not Germans in all of them, but we took seven or eight prisoners out of the first one. There were three families.

T: Did the Germans fight back or did they surrender?

F: I don’t know what was going to happen. The civilians came up out of the stairs. I estimate three families came up out of the basement, the cellar. Then we still heard people talking German down there, so one of the fellas fired his M1 [rifle] down the steps, and then they came up. They were pretty quiet. We pointed them back to the underpass and that’s the way they went. I don’t know if any of them made it, civilian or German. No idea. But we were being shelled by our own artillery at that time, right behind us. The German artillery was ahead of us. We were caught right in between.

Then we found out later that night we had taken too many houses. We weren’t supposed to be that far out. But we were all green troops. So we had to pull back, if I remember right about three houses. We stayed there until a German shell hit the roof on one building we were in. It was a thatched roof that started to burn, so we had to leave again. The next morning was real foggy. Two German officers came up out of the fog. It looked like they wanted to surrender, but as they got closer—I didn’t see any of this because I was asleep in the basement, but I heard the fire. Man, oh, man! One of them lost his nerve and turned around and started to run. They mowed him down and then the second one turned and the same thing. I don’t know what the purpose was. I’ll never know in my life, I guess. That’s too bad, because we would have let them surrender, I know that. Then we went on. The last buildings we took at Forbach were college buildings. I don’t remember how many exactly, but they were three story buildings. We had prisoners out of that one too. That afternoon we pushed through about a mile of woods, I guess, into Germany.

T: Was your platoon taking fire at this time?

F: Yes.

T: Were there casualties on your side?

F: Oh, yes. We moved up and dug in on a hill, on the crest, on the downside. Not up where they could see a silhouette or anything. The Germans shelled us as soon as we got there. They knew we were there, so we had to dig foxholes in a hurry. We did get into them and we stayed there for a few days. Then we attacked that town, St. Wendel [in the Saar region of Western Germany]. We took a real beating there.

T: When you say took a real beating, what exactly do you mean?

F: I didn’t find out until this last week. No, in July [2001]. I knew two boys that were killed right beside me. One from Minnesota, one from Crookston, the other one from Lake Pepin. I found out from the nephew of one of the boys that there were seven of them killed in our platoon that day. I didn’t know that. I knew we had quite a few wounded. We were just mauled. They shelled us, they machine gunned us, everything.

T: How did this impact you, seeing real time casualties right next to you?

F: Don’t imagine it. (pauses five seconds) It was sad. Cried a lot.

T: Did it change the way you approached your own daily existence then?

F: Oh, yes, yes, yes. I told my wife here a short time ago that while I was up there I saw people being killed all around. I never thought I would go home. I made up my mind to that. Home. (emotionally) Excuse me. (pauses five seconds) Anyway, then we moved up along the Saar River. La Petit Roselle, I found out what the name was; I didn’t know that before. We went up there in the dead of night. We sneaked in there. The Germans came across the river. We were right up along Saar River. They came across the river and kicked us out of that town. Then we went back the following night and that’s where the Siegfried Line [German line of defensive fortifications] was. We went through that. After that we were . . . no front. The [U.S.] Third Army cut right across our front. So all we did from that point on was guard bridges. I stood on the Rhine River manning a .50 caliber [machine gun]. I hope you know we were censored. I tried to give [my future wife] some clue as to where I was. At that time or shortly before that, there was a movie called "Watch on the Rhine," so I wrote in there ,"Have you seen Watch on the Rhine?" She didn’t know it was a clue. It did change my life. I’ve not really been afraid of anything since.

T: That’s interesting. What do you mean by that?

F: I don’t know. A fatalistic attitude, I guess. It was like one general said, that all Marines like him go to heaven—they’ve already been to hell. There isn’t a day goes by that I don’t think of something. Not a one.

T: In a positive sense or in a more negative sense?

F: Positive. I’m glad I’m here. I had heart surgery a little over a year ago, about a year and a half ago, and I came through that all right. My wife has had many, many surgeries, all of them serious. We’ve gone through these things together. Very secure.

T: While in Germany, you said that you were doing a lot of bridge duty, guard duty.

F: Not too much. The main bridge that I guarded was a pontoon bridge at St. Goar, Germany [twenty kilometers south of Koblenz], across the Rhine River.

T: Was this March [1945] by this time?

F: Yes. In fact, it was in early April, I think. Then I had hepatitis real bad.

T: How did you get hepatitis?

F: Nobody knew. But many of us had it. We had a whole hospital full of it. Then I was sent to several hospitals, one in Bacharach, Germany, which is just out of Mainz, and then to Reims, France. They flew us out of there. By ambulance then to a town called Ormalong, which was more or less a holding hospital, I guess. Then to Chalon sur Marne [in France, 120 kilometers east of Paris], the 15th General Hospital.

T: So you had some serious time in hospitals with hepatitis?

F: Yes. I think I went in April 14^thand I came out, well, when I got discharged.

T: So the hepatitis pulled you out of the front line company, and then by the time V-E Day came in May you were in hospital?

F: I was in the hospital in Chalon sur Marne when that happened. I was there.

T: What do you remember about V-E Day? You had obviously been through some serious front line combat. How did the German surrender affect you?

F: I felt that I might live. That was number one. I guess I was happy everything was over, even though I wasn’t home and I didn’t know when I would get home. The Army being what it is. When they don’t know what to do with you they just keep you in one spot. I think that’s what happened in the hospital that I was at, too. I was feeling fine, and I was ready to go with my group. They said, "No, you’re going home." And I didn’t feel like breaking any rules at that point.

T: So from France you were on a ship back to the States?

F: Yes. We were moved from the general hospital at Chalon sur Marne back to Mourmelon [France], and then put on trains and went down to Cherbourg [in France, an Atlantic port city] to await a ship to take us home. It was a luxury ship, or a cruise ship, called the Santa Paula. I don’t know which company owned it, but it had been converted to a hospital ship.

T: When did you arrive back in the States then?

F: Oh, I don’t know if I can remember that exactly. I can tell you almost—when did they drop the first [atomic] bomb?

T: On August 6^th, 1945.

F: Okay. Then it must have been about August 3^rd when I got back to the States. The 2^nd or 3^rd, because I was in a barber chair getting a shave. I had a twenty-four hour pass. Not just me alone, but everybody that came in after they checked us over. So twenty-four hours into New York City and I was getting shaved in the morning, and the barber asked me if I had heard about the bomb. I said, "What bomb?" He said, "They dropped a bomb on Japan and destroyed a whole city." Fathom that. I can remember that when I got home.

T: Before you heard the news about that bomb, were you concerned? In other words, were you expecting to be sent to the Pacific to participate in the invasion [of Japan, planned for Fall 1945]?

F: I felt quite sure until they decided to sent me home, instead of down to Marseilles. I didn’t figure I’d have to go anymore after that. I got a medical discharge.

T: You had a medical discharge?

F: Yes. V-J Day came pretty soon after that—what do you remember about that personally?

F: I remember I was at Camp Carson, now Fort Carson, Colorado, waiting for somebody to make my furlough papers so I could go home. All the civilians took off to celebrate and we were just left there. (laughs)

T: You were in the hospital and the civilians were in town?

F: Right. So I didn’t have a chance to celebrate. All the hoopla and everything they saw in New York City, and I suppose in Los Angeles and all the other places, I didn’t have anything to do with that. Can’t be blamed.

T: Were you still in a hospital bed or were you just confined?

F: No, we were ambulatory. Ambulatory quite a while, in fact ever since Chalon sur Marne.

T: I want to go back just a second to the six weeks to two months of front line experience that you had. Is that about the right time frame, six weeks, two months?

F: Yes.

T: The combat experience that you described—in what ways do you think the real experience differed from what you had imagined that it would be like?

F: It was harder. Tougher, much tougher.

T: Tougher emotionally?

F: Yes. And physically. You go for, well, I’ll give you an example. After we got to Forbach they brought a field kitchen up close. They tried it the first night we were there and the Germans got behind us and shot it up. So they had it up the next afternoon. I went back to get a hot meal. I can remember what it was—it was dehydrated potatoes, canned chicken, peas, chocolate pudding. It was all mixed together, almost, in one mess kit. My stomach couldn’t take it. I’d been living on K rations for weeks. My stomach wouldn’t allow it, so I upchucked the whole works. I went back to the foxhole and opened a K ration. After that I went a little easy. I’d take a little bit at a time. But that looked so good. I thought, "Boy, this is great!"

T: Real food for a change?

F: Real food. But it didn’t agree with me and I’m not the only one it didn’t agree with. If you slept, it usually was in snatches. Maybe an hour. Nobody that was alone slept alone in a foxhole. There’s no way he would go to sleep, particularly at night. Somebody always had to stand guard. That’s a long time to stand for an hour, then get up for an hour, then lay down in the hole there or whatever.

T: Were you frequently in foxholes with one or two other guys?

F: At least one, and sometimes two. We got real inventive after a while. It was raining in March and April there, the same as it does around here. We would dig the hole and dig it quite wide, a narrow trench. Then we’d take and about five or six inches above the floor of the foxhole we’d dig straight back about six feet, wide enough for two people to lay there. We put logs on top of it and then pile dirt on top of the logs so we were protected from the weather and from shelling. So that worked out pretty good. Two could sleep and one could stand guard. We had the comforts of home there for a while. Quite a few balsam rafters in there, so it smelled nice. Of course none of us could smell how we smelled. That was one blessing.

T: You mentioned that bathing was a rarity.

F: Oooooh, yes. They’d bring a shower up. They brought one up at St. Goar, I know that. That was really heaven to have a hot shower.

T: A portable thing?

F: Yes. Truck with pumps and stuff like that. That was nice. I got in trouble at the hospital in Bacharach, too, because I hadn’t had a bath for so terribly long and some of the guys in the tent hospital, they –

F: I went there and it was a nice day. The sun was out, and it was spring. The grass was green there already in that part of Germany. I decided that I’d stay out on the grass outside of the hospital tent. I hadn’t been there too long until the nurse came from there and told me, "You better get back in there. Back in your cot." I went back in. The doctor they had there, turned out he was Austrian. He had gotten out of Austria before Hitler took over. Very, very broken accent. He examined me and he said "Vat do you vant to do, kill yourself?" I said, "Why, what’s the matter?" "Your liver is svollen like a balloon. Stay in bed." So I had my lumps that day, too.

Anyway, this is kind of weird. You probably won’t understand it right away, but I’ll tell you. Across from me—I was right next to the nurses station—across from me was a closed (***). There was a person in there moaning and groaning something terrible. The nurse talked to this doctor, and said, "Please . go and see what is wrong with him." She said "I can’t understand him. I’ve been in there and I don’t know his language." So the doctor went in there. He came back out almost immediately and he said….I could hear this. I was close enough. "Call the MP’s, and get an ambulance here quickly." She said "What’s the matter?" He said, "He’s Hungarian, and they fought with the Germans. They fought against us. Somebody here may kill him. Get him out of here." So, boy, in no time there were MP’s there with an ambulance.

T: When one is in a foxhole at night or you’re under fire, what kind of things went through your mind?

F: I wondered if they were going to attack. That’s your big worry. Like I told you earlier on, you didn’t use your rifle at night if you could possibly avoid it. You threw hand grenades instead which, when you had time to get rid of them, they were a handy weapon. All kinds of shrapnel, and it goes all directions. That was our weapon of choice after dark. We never had a night attack, though. I did get put on outpost once with a fella that couldn’t hear. His name was Knox. We were about one hundred fifty yards in front of our lines in a hole that had been dug at night. We were to stay down there as the early warning for those in back, in case the Germans did try to infiltrate or attack. Every time I’d doze off for a little bit, "Did you hear that? Did you hear?" I said, "How can I hear? I’m sleeping." I never got any rest at all for twenty-four hours.

T: How do you function without much sleep?

F: I don’t know. I don’t know. I read the captain’s book here that he’s just written about our company. Sometimes we were walking and you were asleep. He said he caught himself doing that several times. I’m sure most of us must have. We marched a lot sometimes. I think one time we covered sixteen miles through woods. That’s a heck of a long ways to go.

T: Carrying stuff with you, right?

F: Yes.

T: Let’s shift a little bit. You mentioned some nurses a little bit ago. Were those Army nurses?

F: Yes.

T: Did you see women in other capacities during your time in the military?

F: Just Red Cross girls. Saw a few of them. They had them attached to the hospital at Chalon sur Marne. The nurses were wonderful. They were very compassionate people. I guess I never heard an unkind word said about them. We had some that were better than others. We had one that always came in with sleeping pills if you needed them. Gave you a backrub sometimes. She’d do that too. They were very caring about us. That was one of the benefits of being in the hospital, I guess. Our cooking was done by French civilians in that general hospital. They’d get all the K.P. We were all on special diets so we didn’t get a chance to go eat anywhere else. We had to eat there.

T: How about in your division or your regiment? Was the cooking done by local civilians or by regular Army guys?

F: Regular Army.

T: Did blacks serve in that area?

F: I didn’t see any.

T: Not in your regiment at all?

F: The first encounter I had with a black was in that hospital in Chalon sur Marne. Big fella. Really nice guy. He had the bed next to mine. There were eleven of us in that ward. We had one boy from Carolina, a couple from Texas. They didn’t seem to want much to do with him. I started talking to him right away because he was the same thing as I am, except a different color. He was kind of stand-offish, but we played an awful lot of cards. We played Monopoly sometimes for days on end. We used to play hearts so I asked Bob, "Come on. Sit down and play hearts with us." He said, "Okay," and he came. After a while this boy from Carolina, who was as wiry as you can get, he tried to wrestle old Bob, and Bob picked him up with one arm. It was the craziest thing you ever saw.

T: Really? What was the wrestling about?

F: Just for the fun of it. This little fella was galloping around there. He said he had a Purple Heart. I said, "Where in the Sam Hill did you get a Purple Heart?" "I got hit in the heel," he said. "What?" "I got a piece of shrapnel in my heel." He got a Purple Heart for that and he was in the hospital. He had jaundice besides, but he was all right.

T: You get a Purple Heart for hepatitis?

F: No. No.

T: It had to be wound.

F: Yes. No Purple Heart for me. They gave me a couple of medals. I got a Bronze Star and Combat Infantry Badge, a few things like that.

T: What did you earn the Bronze Star for?

F: The very fact that I have a Combat Infantry Badge entitled me to a Bronze Star. The Combat Infantry Badge is something that’s not awarded just lightly. It’s got to be pretty solid. You have to have been under fire for at least twelve hours.

T: Then you get a Combat Infantry Badge.

F: Yes. I got a raised bayonet. Made PFC, too.

T: That was your rank when you were discharged, too, right?

F: Yes.

T: Frederick, was there one person who you can recall that you looked up to or that made an impression on you that lasted?

F: You mean in the service?

T: Yes, in the service.

F: Yes. We had a sergeant, Lunsford, our platoon sergeant. He was a tremendous guy. Very religious man. He was an awfully good leader, but he was a deadly killer. That’s the only thing I can say. I can’t equate that. He was very quiet. I don’t think the Germans stood much chance with him. I haven’t seen him since then. We had Harvey Voss, our assistant squad leader. I talked to him here over in Westminster, Colorado, a few years ago. He said, "I had to be the dumbest one in the lot." I said "What do you mean?" "Well," he said, "You know, I was in the Air Corps first." I said "No, I didn’t know that." He said, "They were short of infantry. Since I’d had basic, but not infantry basic, they packed a whole bunch of us off to infantry. I wound up in C Company over there, and I didn’t even know how to take the rifle apart." But he turned out to be second squad leader, and our assistant squad leader. He was from Decatur, Illinois. When he got home, he said, "My buddies had all been in the Navy and they talked me into being in the Naval Reserve. Just in time for Korea." (laughs)

T: He made the tour in all the services then.

F: Sure. He said, "I’ve only got the Marine Corps and I’ve covered them all. I couldn’t even tie that stupid tie they got in the Navy," he said. "I don’t know what I was doing there. My buddies never had to go. I was the only one who went."

T: A little of Murphy’s Law there.

F: Yes.

T: Let’s get back to that first guy you mentioned. You called your platoon sergeant a deadly killer?

F: Deadly.

T: What did you see that causes you to say that?

F: I know that. I wasn’t there, but we had two houses to take at night, both of them across the road and up an embankment from where we were. We took one, and Lunsford took a squad up to the other one. I mean there was no mercy shown—he shot the Germans that were there. Fortunately the German that had been in the building that we took had left prior to when we drove in. Everything. So I don’t know what he looked like, how old he was or anything.

The first Germans I saw, by the way, I was still at Odding. I went with a jeep, a jeep driver and myself. We went down and got them at night. It was a man that was quite elderly and a young boy. The old fella, he told our interpreter when we got back to Odding, he said that he’d been in the First World War, so I’d give his age as close to sixty. He said he told the young fella, "The first Americans we see you break your rifle and you surrender." He said the boy, who was sixteen, didn’t want to do that. He said "You can’t win. They will kill you. You just better surrender. I know they will be good to us." So we brought them back. I had to go along with the jeep driver and these two fellas back to the camp where they held them, a barbed wire enclosure. A big barn, one of the bigger ones I saw over there. It was just full of German prisoners.

T: By March-April 1945 we were taking a lot of prisoners, weren’t we?

F: Yes. We took as many as two hundred a day sometimes. It would go on like that until somebody got anxious and shot one of them. Then it would stop just as though you’d turn off a tap.

T: They perceived it as safe to surrender?

F: Yes. Until somebody got wild and shot one of them.

T: Let me ask you a slightly more difficult question. Did you ever kill anybody yourself?

F: I don’t know. And if I did I wouldn’t tell you.

T: I understand.

On a different subject then, staying in touch with family and loved ones back home.

F: I wrote quite a bit. Every chance—even in the foxhole I’d write.

T: Were you a good letter writer?

F: My writing isn’t all that good.

T: Were you a regular letter writer?

F: Yes. But when I went to the hospital they kind of lost touch with me. They didn’t get my mail and I didn’t get theirs, so we had a period of about a month or more where nobody knew where I was. My Dad went to the Red Cross, and they tried to locate me and they couldn’t. [My future wife] did get one letter from me from the hospital so she knew I was in a hospital, but I couldn’t tell her what was wrong or anything. Just the 15^th General Hospital.

T: At least they knew you were in a hospital and not missing in action.

F: Yes.

T: Had you been missing in action that would have been reported another way, right?

F: Yes. I hope so. I would hope so.

T: How important was mail to you as a soldier?

F: Very important. Very important. It was some touch you had with reality, really. Because, believe me, battle isn’t real. Man isn’t made to do this kind of thing. It’s certainly no place for eighteen, nineteen year old kids.

T: How often did you get mail in the company?

F: Pretty darn regular. Her (points to wife, sitting in chair across the room), my parents, my Aunt Eva, my sister on occasion. They were faithful letter writers to me. It went kind of crazy after I finally got back in the pipeline for the mail. I got a package. There was two pair of stockings in there, G.I. stockings, some candles which I had written for, and some brownies that were nothing but crumbs. The package was all beat up. Nobody from home ever sent me stockings. I don’t know. They must have broken the package open and packed up whatever they could. (laughs)

T: Did they eat your brownies too?

F: There was nothing to eat!

T: There are a number of movies with scenes of guys getting mail. How close is that to reality?

F: Pretty close. Close even during basic training. If you didn’t a letter that day, you felt kind of down. It was very important. Very important.

T: How about news? Was [the Army’s official daily] Stars and Stripes out there?

F: Yes. Occasionally we’d get a copy of that, yes. That was about the only news.

T: Radio, too?

F: Quite a bit back at that hospital. We had radio then. Armed Forces Network. They played music and gave us news broadcasts.

T: Any news while you were up on the line?

F: No.

T: From the way you describe it, it sounds that once one enters into this on the line area that almost that time and space become . . .

F: Exactly.

T: . . . almost turned off.

F: Exactly. One of the things that really aggravated us, and I don’t know why it should, but it did at the time. I smoked at that time. I smoked Lucky Strike cigarettes. We were given cigarettes when we went up on the line. We didn’t have to buy them; we were given them. We had four cigarettes that would come in each K ration. We had K rations for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and there were four cigarettes in each one of them. They would bring a carton of cigarettes which had ten and distribute it among the squad. Sometimes the squad would each get a package. Eleven man squad you usually had one or two missing and you had replacements for them. So we were pretty content with that but they never brought our favorite brand up there. Chelseas, Old Golds, God only knows what else. Brought up there. We knew they had to have them, because once in a while they’d bring some up there.

T: Luckys you mean?

F: Yes. Camels, too. We really were wild about that. I mean, it’s something you would really gripe about. (laughs) Sounds crazy now, doesn’t it?

T: Yes, but it kind of reflects the way you described being in this little world that was disconnected from a lot of real world concerns.

F: Another thing I noticed, in my platoon anyway, I don’t know how it was in the other two platoons, but our platoon never had a commissioned officer lead us in combat. I have never gotten an answer why we don’t have one. All I ever I heard from anybody, even to this day, is we had one. I don’t know if our platoon killed him or what, I don’t know. I do know we had one fella after we came off the line in a village, a little German town, one fella tried to kill the executive officer. Fired at him at point blank range with an M1 rifle. Three times. Missed him every time. And everybody was mad at the fella that was doing the shooting. They said, he wanted to kill him, he should have killed him. Then they wanted us to guard him until the MP’s came and got him, and we wouldn’t do it.

T: Why not?

F: Oh, I don’t know. (shrugs shoulders) He was one of ours.

T: There is a camaraderie.

F: Oh, my yes. Oh, my yes. We’re still that close. You go to a reunion like we were just at last week. I didn’t see any tears this time. Oh, I did too, Captain Greenwald shed them. But we cry a lot. I don’t know why, but we do. We’re close. The men hug each other like we were brothers, and the women they all hug us too. It’s just like one cohesive group now. This is it. There’s a terrible lot of pride in an infantry outfit.

T: Has that sense of closeness increased or decreased over the years?

F: Increased. Increased. Yes. We start now, I believe we’re going to hold our company reunion every year.

T: Do you always have it the same place?

F: No. One time in Raleigh, North Carolina, another time in Omaha. We’ve been all over the place.

T: You mentioned that getting cigarettes was kind of a thing to focus on. What about drinking, alcohol?

F: I guess I never had much to do with it because, honestly, I wouldn’t want my mind befuddled if I’m trying to defend myself. Some of the fellas had their canteens filled with wine. We liberated a wine cellar in one German town, which I did have a few glasses then. That has some strange tales to be told about that, too.

T: I’d like to hear them.

F: This Harvey Voss that I mentioned a while ago? He and I were delegated. We were in the basement of the house. We were delegated to go out and see if we could find some food. So the first thing we did, we got outside and we were behind the lines quite a ways then, so we weren’t too concerned about German soldiers. We broke into this guy’s chicken coop and we killed every one of his chickens and brought them back to the bunch of drunken fools in the basement. They claimed they would cook them if we brought them. We brought them.

T: Did they cook them?

F: Yes, they did.

T: Chickens and white wine? (laughs)

F: They weren’t putting the wine in the chickens, I can guarantee you that! (laughs)

T: They were drinking wine and eating chickens.

F: Oh, yes, yes, yes. Harvey and I went out and found a barn after we got the chickens. I don’t know how many chickens, but there were quite a number of them. The guy had a cow there, too. We tried to milk the cow and I think both of us, being city boys, we had no luck at that whatsoever. And the goat, we couldn’t get any milk out of that either.

Then we debated whether we would kill the cow or not, because that would taste real good, fresh meat. But nobody knew how to dress the thing out. It was spared. The goat, too. Nobody could think of eating goat. We came back in the basement. It was smoky. "What on earth is burning?" When we went through the Siegfried Line, the Germans had pulled out just ahead of us. The artillery weapons and everything was still there. One fella claimed he could read German. So he picked up a can, a colored one. It was supposed to be cooking fat, he said, but it wasn’t—it was grease for the guns. (laughs) These clowns down there, some of the chickens didn’t have all their feathers pulled off of them, some still had the innards in them yet. I’m telling you, that was some mess.

T: You didn’t have a lot of farm guys down there cooking?

F: No!

T: You put city guys in charge of that and that’s what you get.

F: Yes. That wine cellar was in that same community. Boy, that was a real trial for our company commander.

T: This was across into Germany now?

F: Yes. A big wine cask, probably hold three or four hundred gallons. Laying on their sides. We tasted the wine in each one of them as we went along. Not a lot, but just to find out which one was the best. If we didn’t like it somebody took a Browning automatic and blew holes in it and drained it all into the gutter. Of course, we filled bottles and took them back to our billet. We were supposed to move down to the Rhine to guard these bridges to St. Goar and, of course, the captain couldn’t get anybody moving. So he put two guards down there on the door to the wine cellar. And gave orders not to let any of us in.

T: The captain figured what was going on here?

F: Oh, he knew what was going on. And he was kind of lenient with us because, like he said, we’d been through hell. So he wasn’t too disturbed yet. But he’s got orders, too—he’s supposed to hold us down to guard that bridge. So he put two guards on there. Unfortunately they were enlisted men. So the orders were not to go into the wine cellar, not to let us in. So they didn’t. They filled the bottles and passed them out to us. There isn’t a day when a PFC can’t outthink a captain. (laughs)

Anyway, that afternoon, late that afternoon, he’d finally gotten enough of it, I guess. He marched us all down to a hay shed and locked us in. He took our matches and cigarettes away from us and, cruel man that he was, the next morning lined us up in the street. There was a Burgermeister [German: mayor] standing there with a top hat on, a couple of women and a priest. The captain was there, too, and pretty upset because he didn’t know what was going on. He went with his interpreter and talked to them. These two women claimed that they’d been raped, that very night. The captain called them a polite name for a prostitute, and "Get them the hell out of here. There ain’t nobody in this outfit had any chance to do that! I can guarantee you. They’ve been under lock and key. So take them away!" Then they marched us fourteen miles up to the line without a break. Terrible punishment.

T: Was that the only contact you had with German civilians?

F: No. In Alsace-Lorraine—you’re a history teacher, so you probably know that already, that the population is bilingual there, for the most part. We had contact with some Germans there. Other than that, we didn’t much have anything to do with them, outside of the ones that were forced out of the houses that we occupied.

T: Did you have more contact with French civilians?

F: Yes. Well, some of them weren’t all that pleasant. We did have some contact with French soldiers, though, at Forbach. They didn’t speak English and they didn’t know our password, so close to a whole platoon of them almost got killed.

T: These are Free French forces?

F: Yes. You can’t tell in the dark down the street. "Halt! Halt!" They stopped, but they couldn’t say anything. They didn’t know the password. Somebody came up from the C.P. downstairs and said, "For God’s sake don’t kill them. They’re Free French. They’re going over to harass and patrol.’’ And they did. They went through the line there and fired around. They must have all had automatic weapons, because that’s all we heard over there. In the morning we looked out of the window over across the tracks. They’d killed the horse that pulled the chow wagon and that was tipped over. Other than that I don’t see that they did much damage. (laughs)

T: Ever see those guys again?

F: No.

T: They moved on to greener pastures it sounds like. The number of months you were on the front lines must have been pretty stressful. Lack of sleep and the combat, casualties. Even getting your cigarettes taken away that one time.

F: That was traumatic. They weren’t taken away. They just didn’t bring what we wanted.

T: In difficult times, were there guys who handled stress better than others?

F: Oh, yes. We had a Sergeant Thompson. This fella that cut loose with the rifle on the executive officer. Both of them had gone back for what they termed "combat fatigue" at that time. I don’t know what they call it now.

T: Post-traumatic stress disorder.

F: Yes. That Sergeant Thompson almost cost me my life.

T: How’s that?

F: We were house to house fighting, and he and I were laying in a ditch together, side by side. You had to cross the cobblestone road or street, I guess it would be, in Forbach, and get into a house directly across from that. He was supposed to cover me, which means he would watch both ways and if the Germans started shooting he’d fire back at them. He didn’t. I heard a burp gun [small automatic weapon] going off and shells coming off those cobblestones. I was fortunate enough to get behind the low wall which protected me. I couldn’t figure out what happened, why he didn’t fire. I thought maybe he’d gotten killed. Later on somebody said he was laying in the ditch. He didn’t really have any touch with reality any more.

This big fella that shot at the executive officer he was in the foxhole with us, just visiting, I think, when we got a barrage. He darned near smothered two of them in there. He crawled back in our little nest that we’d built. He was a big man. We never saw him after that either. And we had one young replacement who came in the same time I did. I didn’t know his name. He was working for a squad that got up on the tracks at Forbach and he froze. I mean, he froze standing up. It’s not uncommon to freeze laying down, but standing up you’re really scared. Somebody finally knocked him down or he would have been killed for sure by artillery.

T: He couldn’t move?

F: He just froze. I never saw him again either. That’s the only three that I know of.

T: You say freezing in a down position was more common?

F: I think so. It takes a lot of courage just to lift your head up over the ground. It takes an awful lot. You don’t know you have it. I’ve heard say, "Well, they killed my buddy. I’m going to kill them." That’s not the case. That’s just nonsense. You’re not there to kill everybody you see. You want to take territory. If you can take it peacefully, that’s fine. I never saw anybody that deliberately set out to kill Germans, even though one general said, "You’re over here for that reason only." I didn’t agree with that. I still don’t.

T: Does one get used to it, this kind of daily pressure and stress and fire?

F: To a certain degree. You learn, outside of getting a mortar shell, and a meemie [mortar shell] wasn’t even a worry, because you heard them launched. Mortar shells were another thing. They don’t always (***) from the ground, the Germans. Ours did. Outside of that ,I bet I still could tell you how close an artillery shell was going to land. It was kind of a benchmark that if you could survive your first three days in combat, your chances of survival would go up considerably because your senses are all working. You may not be able to see an enemy but you know he’s there. You can hear artillery coming in.

T: There was a movie several years ago, Saving Private Ryan [U.S. film, 1998]. Have you seen that film?

F: Yes. Oh, yes.

T: The final sequence of the film has some house to house fighting around a bridge. From the perspective of a veteran who experienced a similar thing, how would you comment on that sequence in the film?

F: Two things were wrong with it, but I don’t know if it could be improved upon. I’ve thrown quite a few grenades. Believe me, they don’t make as big a bang, or as big a puff, go up in the air, as in the film. The trajectory is out from them. In fact you can lay from here to that chair and I can throw a grenade and land there and you won’t get a scratch. Of course, it’s got the ground to bounce off of. So that part of it was not really accurate I would say.

And another thing that I noticed immediately. This fella that was a captain, he had his captain’s bars on his helmet. No officer that I ever saw would go ahead and wear his bars in combat, because he would be the first one killed or captured. He just wouldn’t do it. So that part of it was false. Other than that I think it was pretty darned good movie, and I enjoyed it. After the first half-hour I enjoyed it.

T: That sequence at the end with the house to house fighting and the weapons and the closeness of the soldiers to each other was, in your opinion, fairly realistic.

F: Yes.

T: At times they were within feet of each other.

F: Right. You’re an historian. If you want to read a good book, it’s written by a Russian by the name of Siminoff, and it’s entitled Days and Nights. It’s about the defense of Stalingrad. It will give you an insight into the Russian people like you would never get from any other source. One of the best books I’ve ever read.

T: One final question on that subject: Did you make lasting contacts during your time in the Army, contacts that you maintained after the war?

F: No, I didn’t. The only contacts I had with any of them was 1989 or 1990 when I went to an Army reunion in Las Vegas. When I got there I didn’t know any of those people until Captain Greenwald came. I knew him. That’s the only one I knew. The rest of the fellas, I don’t know exactly what their positions were in the company but ,like Bill Thorne, I know he was infantry. The company is an infantry company, but it isn’t every infantryman that goes into combat. I think Bill Thorne was one. I know a fella that died here, Mitch Ferguson. He was our squad leader, and I know him. But I never really had much contact with them.

T: But you did starting in 1989?

F: Yes.

T: What prompted you to reach out?

F: Her. (motions to wife) She urged me to go. We had a place in Arizona at that time. We spent the winter there. I got my truck and a load of furniture and we went down there with the idea of going to Las Vegas to the Army reunion. I had sent the money in and everything already. After we were down there I decided I wasn’t going to go. But she persuaded me.

T: Good decision?

F: Yes. She usually makes good ones. We may argue about it a little bit, but she usually makes pretty good ones.

T: Sounds like a situation I can relate to.

F: Yes. (laughs)

T: Let’s go on to transitioning back to civilian life.

F: It wasn’t difficult at all.

T: Why not?

F: I came out of the service with two things in mind: one is to marry her (motions again to wife), and to set up housekeeping, to have a home of my own. And that we proceeded to do.

T: You were married in August of 1945?

F: Yes.

T: You also went right back to your job.

F: Within a week of getting out of the service I was back at my job.

T: You weren’t one of these 52-20 guys [unemployment benefit paid to ex-servicemen; $20 weekly for a maximum of 52 weeks]?

F: Never drew a dime of it.

T: Do you think the fact that you had a job made the whole transition process easier for you?

F: Yes, I’m sure it did.

T: Frederick, how do you think life in your community or your town, how did you perceive it having changed when you came back?

F: It really hadn’t changed all that much. You realize I was only in the Army about thirteen months or so. It didn’t get a chance to change all that much. We had a hard time to find a best man because everybody was in the service. But luckily one of my boyhood friends came home on furlough. At that particular time he was in the Marine Corps. I was in the Army. So we did get attendants after a while.

T: From that period that you were in the Army, would you say that you had changed more than your hometown?

F: I guess I probably did. She says I left as an eighteen year old and came home a fifty-five year old. (pauses three seconds) That’s pretty sobering, you know. It is after that anyway. Don’t get me wrong: I still enjoyed things, the grandchildren, the great-grandchildren. The children are an enjoyment to me, very much so. We welcome new great-grandchildren regularly, it seems. (laughs)

T: Judging by the numbers that’s right.

F: Sixteen. They’re doing pretty good.

T: You used the word sobering. Does that imply a daily appreciation of life, or more a dark side?

F: Yes. Like I told you earlier, there isn’t a day goes by that I don’t think of my time in service, one facet or the other of it. I also think how fortunate I am, because I have a wife of fifty-six years. Everything has been good for me. We’ve had our ups and downs with illnesses and stuff, but that’s our age that’s doing that. Nothing to be alarmed about. We just know it’s there. I’ve grown more mellow, I guess; I don’t fly off the handle like I used to. The first two years I was home must have been terrible for her and my children. I didn’t sleep well. I didn’t function real well. I just, well, I just can’t explain it.

T: You attribute that to your time in Europe?

F: Oh, yes. I’m sure.

Wife: We were sitting on the front porch of the house one day, just sitting and talking, and a car backfired down further on the highway. Everybody kind of looked to see what was going on, and when we turned back Fred was gone. We couldn’t find him. We kept calling, "Fred, where are you? Where did you go? Fred?" (pauses three seconds) He had crawled under our truck and was laying there curled up.

F: That’s something you don’t get used to. (pauses three seconds) Anyway, life has been good to me. I worked for our church a lot. We’re slowing down now. We used to work continuously up there. I was in charge of putting the church up. Hired the contractors and the architect.

T: That’s the church in Cloquet?

F: Yes. I supervised the construction of the first phase, but then I kind of burned out on that, I guess, and let it go. The second phase started, and I wasn’t going to touch it. But after a while, the foreman, someplace in Michigan, he caught me going out of church and he said, "I want you here tomorrow morning." I said, "I’m not coming back; I’ve had it." "No, no. I need you. Come back." I don’t know why, but the next morning I put my toolbox in the truck and I went up there, and stayed with it until it was finished.

T: Last thing. Can I ask you, do you have a favorite personal memory that you want to share?

F: About wartime? I guess coming home. We landed on Staten Island and there was Red Cross there to meet us. We had busses, city busses. New York, I would imagine. I’m not that acquainted with the city of New York, so it may not have been Staten Island either, but that’s what somebody told me. They loaded us in busses. The Red Cross was there in force. We got donuts and milk and coffee. They stayed with us with a police escort. They took us right through New York, and never stopped for a traffic light. We had motorcycle escort to the George Washington Bridge. From there the New Jersey State Police took over and took us to Camp Kilmer. That was a happy time. It was home. Everybody was getting along famously with each other at that point.

T: Actually being back in the United States made a big impression on you. Anything else you want to add, Mr. Branham?

F: No, I guess not. I could go on for hours, I guess. I am writing my biography. I’m up to the war period now. I have a very good memory; it goes back to about three years old. I could put a lot of things together in my memory. One thing wrong, you probably know this. You write for a while and then you leave it alone and you come back to it, and you find out you forgot something really important. So you make an addendum. I don’t type; she types. So we have some confusion over where I’m at on which page. I’m not writing now. I have work to do in my yard here now. We just got back from New Orleans and we’re planning on going to Branson again in the middle of October. We do travel. Last winter, it was this year, wasn’t it? We were in the Dominican Republic. We went there for a week. We’ve always traveled. As soon as our children were able to be on their own and even some before that, we traveled. We’ve been to Europe, England four times, Spain. For our fiftieth anniversary we celebrated and went to Greece and Italy, and had a cruise among the Greek Islands. Very nice. Very tiring.

T: Traveling is hard work, isn’t it?

F: It is.

T: Mr. Branham, thank you very much for your time today.

F: You’re welcome.